Following last week's dispatch from the future from this Leicester City fan, we found another email from the future in our inbox this morning, this time dated exactly fifteen years in the future. Again, there has been no mention of Donald Trump.
From: REDACTED<[email protected]>
Date: Wednesday April 19th 2031 08:36
To: The Gaffer <[email protected]>
Subject: What happened to Conor McGregor post-retirement
To whom it may concern,
My name is REDACTED. In addition to being a full-time digital marketing executive, I am a part-time writer and full-time Conor McGregor fanboy, which I have little issue in admitting. I have followed McGregor’s career for all of my working life, and disappointingly, I was recently overlooked as his official biographer in favour of renowned MMA enthusiast Conor Neville. As a result, I have decided to email you the unofficial – but no less truthful –story of Conor McGregor’s life post-retirement, upon this, the fifteenth anniversary of that fateful tweet.
I have decided to retire young.
Thanks for the cheese.
Catch ya's later.— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) April 19, 2016
The reaction to McGregor’s announcement was a disgrace. Many questioned McGregor’s honesty as they dismissing it as a hoax, with others believing it simply to be an attempt to leverage more money out of Dana White and the UFC. This was a totally incorrect interpretation of McGregor’s true character.
As everyone seemed to have forgotten, McGregor is a political animal, fiercely committed to the democratic process. In December 2015, you may remember he gave an interview to the recently-elected British Prime Minister Alistair Campbell where he said that “my fans think I am the Taoiseach”. In April 2016, with Ireland entering a 52nd day without a government, McGregor heroically decided to rescue the situation and stand for election in Ireland.
He did so as an independent candidate. Despite being forced to change the theme of his campaign for fear of coming across as autocratic, Conor McGregor TD was elected in Dublin South-Central under the slogan ‘We’re Not Just Here to Take Part In The Democratic Process, We’re Here To Take Over to the Extent Proportional Representation Will Allow’.
Well was fun while it lasted
— Coach Kavanagh (@John_Kavanagh) April 19, 2016
McGregor faced immediate problems however, as the Dublin economy had collapsed. The irony here is that, having been accused of ‘breaking the internet’ on a regular basis for years, McGregor’s retirement announcement genuinely did. The loss of McGregor news led a number of digital outlets into financial difficulty and eventual distinction. The end of these outlets had a knock-on effect for digital publishing firm Facebook, with the loss of advertising revenue leading them to pull out of their European HQ in Dublin, causing mass unemployment in Dublin.
McGregor decided to help the situation by helping to fund a number of hotels and casinos on Griffith Avenue. (Following the announcement of the plans, McGregor was forced to pay for the counselling of five Liveline producers, who quit their jobs owing to absurd levels of stress and over-work). McGregor’s plan to host a number of MMA events at these hotels on the Griffith Strip to boost the local economy failed unfortunately, as there was a lack of young fighters in Dublin to compete in these events.
Oddly, the ripped young men of Ireland, replete with beard and man-bun, decided to follow McGregor into politics, many running in the Seanad elections. This led to a slew of witty and intelligent broadsheet newspaper columnists decrying the decision of these young men to enter politics rather than the “comparatively cleaner, more worthy and less dangerous” sport of MMA.
McGregor’s political career hit the headlines in the United States, and the election debate involving McGregor was the first Irish debate in history to be screened via Pay Per View on HBO. This was a short-lived experiment, however, and was abandoned in the middle of the first debate. HBO justified the decision to pull the plug on the grounds of there being an odd creaking noise along with the fact that “everybody was just talking shite”.
I guess my work here is done I'm retiring too✌🏼️👊🏼
— Nathan Diaz (@NateDiaz209) April 19, 2016
McGregor’s political career ended just six months after election. With the Griffith Strip a disaster, McGregor was forced to stand down following an ill-judged ‘red panty night’ comment towards President Michael D. Higgins.
A period in the wilderness followed, with McGregor lying low and focusing on community work in Crumlin. He hosted a weekly reading club for children at a local library, but this soon fell apart. McGregor’s intense delivery of the stories frightened the children, and was told not to return following a claim that he would have “smashed humpty dumpty before that fucker ever got on a wall” and a long diatribe about Baa Baa Black Sheep’s failure to adequately monetize bags of wool.
At a low ebb, McGregor then made the most of the vestigial connections he had left from his UFC career, and landed a role in xXx Squared, the ninth installment of Vin Diesel’s SEO unfriendly action franchise. McGregor was cast as ‘Forlorn Plumber #2’ and appeared in the opening scene, as Diesel crashed a car through a bathroom in which McGregor was mending a toilet. The role failed to gain critical acclaim, as McGregor struggled to pull off the requisite look of humility.
Dana White just announced on ESPN that Conor McGregor is out of UFC 200. They are actively working on a new main event.
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) April 19, 2016
As his acting career failed to take off, McGregor faded into obscurity. Three years ago, he flirted with a return to MMA following yet another call-out by Frankie Edgar, but was unwilling to live full-time in Panama, the only country in which the sport was still legal.
McGregor now lives alone in Dublin where he ponders the religious and metaphysical mysteries of the universe, and has declared himself as a “materialist philosopher, as long as those materials are silk and gold”. McGregor also offers a number of self-defence classes. The most popular of these classes claims that it teaches the capability to disarm an attacker with ease and without guilt, by focussing on developing one’s core and flexibility, entitled Pontius Pilates.
Thank you for reading. It is unclear as to whether Conor McGregor regrets his decision to retire prematurely. The residents of Griffith Avenue certainly do, however.
Yours from the future,
REDACTED
